


Despite the creatures that they both were

by SkinIsCrawling



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Video Game)
Genre: Anal Sex, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Oral Sex, Pre-Canon, Size Difference, just dont think about it too hard, minimal plot sandwiching lots of smut, their relationship is somehow functional in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:20:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23173834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkinIsCrawling/pseuds/SkinIsCrawling
Summary: Sebastian LaCroix finds his grasp slipping from the petty African domain he had once claimed. Fortunately, his companion and not-yet-Sheriff is remarkably good at cheering him up.
Relationships: Sebastian LaCroix/Sheriff
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	Despite the creatures that they both were

LaCroix's study was beginning to feel rather cramped.

It wasn't that the room was particularly unpleasant, in its floors of tiled stone and grand bookshelves of polished wood, nested within a haven freshly carved into the Ivorian coastline and perched atop a blossoming trade town. From a single window, he could glance to the hulking ships sway upon black waters, on the nights that the ferocious tropical storms did not shroud all into a flurry rain and darkness. Tonight was not such a night - the heat of the air was dry, the harbour teemed with kine deep into the evening, and all lay beneath burningly bright streams of moonlight that pierced the sea with its silver.

His frustration stemmed instead from the wistful thought that there might have been a time where he, too, could have stood beneath that moon. He might have strode under the gaze of only the weak and fearful, and easily cast aside any who might have challenged his presence. Yet as the century turned, he had been finding himself wiling weary hours instead beneath the light of candles with tallow burned short, blotting ink and scratching paper rather than watching blood spray and ash scatter at his behest.

He supposed it should have been anticipated. As kine rushed from distant lands to clamour over these soils just as he once had, Kindred were quick to follow - elder Kindred, no less, stronger than those he had once forced from his path, slipping into the sanctum from which he could have forged an empire. The sudden tumult of it all had caught even the eyes of several more powerful Laibon whom had previously skipped uncaring over this particularly modest corner of their lands, now lurking as yet more daggers that might eventually be held at his throat.

Before his eyes, a chance seized had bloated into a wretched tangle of thorns requiring a most cautious tread, and dreams of sitting atop a sprawling domain had long dwindled.

He glanced to the letter before him, tapping his fingers upon his desk. The flourishing script of newest Ventrue to join this fray greeted him mockingly; a man roughly a century his senior, inquiring after some tenuous link between himself and some recent sabotage to the man's works. Nothing more than a blatant fabrication, of course - but one convincing enough to provide a strained excuse to extort free information of him. The letter never quite tipped into outright threat, but its accusatory air was unmistakable, setting his fist to tighten upon his desk. He had nearly forgotten what it felt like to have demands made of himself, by one so proudly looking downwards.

Casting the letter aside for the time being with a twitching curl of his lip, he turned to the myriad of other concerns thrown his way, the dry and yellowed stacks of paper cluttering his desk - his letter opener would soon need sharpening, it seemed. Minutes slipped through his fingers, to be lost forever within this little room as the endless stream of missives whittled his focus without mercy. His competitors' attempts to goad him into a feud seemed particularly shameless that night, and the prostrating apologies from a ghoul of his having failed an assigned task did not bode any better for his humour; only one rapport did not leave a profoundly bitter taste in his mouth. He glanced over it - correspondence from a past acquaintance, one of many kept for the insurance of distant contacts rather than any genuine cordiality on either of their part - boasting some recent endeavours into parts unknown, to the shores of America. Insufferably smug as the entire thing was, it did give him pause. 

The click of his door pulled him quickly away, and though any distraction was welcome, he kept his face composed in impassivity as he looked upwards. A coldness throttled the air, suddenly - an unnatural presence that seeped the bone, but brought relief in its familiarity. He watched the grand figure sweep his doorway, heard the tread of boots heavy upon his floors, and still Sebastian could not help but marvel as he brought himself to his full, magnificent height. Red eyes peered at him, vivid from the gloom.

"A swift return," he commented. "You were successful, then?" 

The Nagloper nodded, and quickly, Sebastian's spirits perked.

He did not regale him great tales of the night, but he hardly needed to - the cool satisfaction of his gaze and the delicate trace of warm blood in the air was information enough. Against all else thrown his way, it seemed there was, at the least, one band of hunters that would no longer trouble them. The silence wound onwards, save for the rustling of the Nagloper removing his coat of questionably-sourced hide, dented and torn from the few stray bolts it must have caught. His silent stare might have been seen as aloof by some, but as one who lived in a world of grinning snakes in all their incessant chatter, the Ventrue had come to welcome his naturally taciturn temperament. 

"My thanks, for settling that. I don't suppose you might look into another matter for me?" The Laibon's brow arched a subtle fraction with his interest, striding to stand behind Sebastian as he returned his attention to the elder Ventrue's letter. When a broad claw came to rest upon his shoulder, Sebastian brushed his fingers over its petrous skin without much thought - the Nagloper's body always seemed to run yet colder than his own, somehow. "Only something that the scouring of a mind or two would greatly speed; I stand accused of... some petty infraction, it ought be cleared easily enough."

He glanced behind him, to see the Nagloper studying the letter with his sharp eyes narrowed in thought. Eventually, he spoke, his even, sombre growl cutting abruptly through his habitual silence.

"Bait lain," he observed. "We are not here for another's stray errands."

"Yes, I am _exceedingly_ aware of that fact," he replied quickly, catching his voice before it could teeter towards snappish. "However, this man remains a potential foe, backed with enough support to be, ah, troublesome. I believe one painless task may well be worth his favour." 

None other than the Ventrue would have noticed the deepening crease to the stoic man's brow, nor would they have been quite so attuned to the scepticism and suspicion in his eyes. He rumbled his relenting assent regardless, lifting the weight of his claw from the Ventrue's shoulder. Sebastian expected him to turn, to disappear for the evening into the one secluded, iron-bolted backroom that carried the scent of vicissitude's sanguine strangeness, where he might toil at his flesh and otherwise attend his fiendish peculiarities. 

Yet instead, Sebastian felt the insistent press of his fingers at his jaw, drawing the Ventrue's focus before it could wander back to his desk, and to the tasks piled upon it. The Nagloper looked knowingly over the heavy lids of his eyes, to the dour fatigue he did not bother to conceal.

"You hunger."

Sebastian sighed. "I do," he admitted. "Not unbearably so; think nothing of it." The Nagloper continued to stare, staunchly unconvinced. "Unless, of course, there is ought you are offering?"

Even if the hunt was no longer something he had the luxury of prioritising, Sebastian could have tided himself over with a vial or two of specifically procured blood - and indeed, the Nagloper knew as such - but the minute pull at the corner of his lips and his expectant gaze held invitation beyond simple nourishment. The careful weighing of his options was undeniably tipped by the cool touch lingering on his jaw, casting his mind elsewhere; to the offer of a passing reprieve, to the rousing of base humanity that the Laibon was always so willing to give, despite the creatures that they both were.

With a final, glum perusal of the letter before him, Sebastian succumbed, and took slowly to his feet. "I suppose a few moments away shan't hurt," he said; to himself, or to the Nagloper, he was unsure.

Stood before him, the other man's might was so very inescapable - he tipped his head back to even look upon his all-enveloping form where it cut from the shadows. When the Nagloper raised his jaw, the thick tendons and sharp point of his neck stood proud, his deep ashen skin spread with dark, spiderwebbing veins - a tempting display, and how it spurred him to reach and feel where each line of his vitae rose from his skin, to wander his fingers over the joining of his neck to the brawn of his shoulder. Even beneath the stiff leather of his undershirt, the sheer might of his arms where they were rounded with his musculature was striking, and his pupils blazed as two startling white pinpricks from a sea of brilliant red. Somehow, he could not comprehend having ever found the sight unsettling. 

His scent was heavy, as the Nagloper leant down towards him - old leather and beneath it, eerie blood, near-suffocating as it seeped with the terrible weight of the strength he bore. Sebastian's hunger responded in turn, tearing needily through his guts; reaching upwards, the Ventrue pressed his lips to the other man's neck, and allowed himself this indulgence.

Sebastian's fangs were unsuited to this; they were made to pierce the supple necks of dazzled kine, not to prey upon the strong and unearthly. He needed to clamp his jaws tightly to slice into the Nagloper's throat - and at that moment, the vitae flooding his mouth was that which he had lacked, with a fullness that no other blood could provide. Cool and burrowing, it wormed down his throat and sunk deep within, rupturing to a slow and biting epicentre of all that allured him, hooking his gullet – his blood felt so uncannily close to _alive_ , settling to writhe darkly beneath his skin.

There were still times when Sebastian doubted these... atypical circumstances under which he had found himself. He recognised, in his rational mind, how he ought have balked at it all - it was hardly becoming to fall to a blood bond, even one that was mutual in nature, and any upstanding member of his clan would be no less than ostracised if found to have veins sullied with a mangled strain of Tzimisce blood. _Horror_ was one of the kinder whispers that followed him as scathing stares fell upon them both, spat with scorn from Laibon and Kindred alike - nothing more than fear, awe and envy, as far as Sebastian could tell. It didn't matter, for _nothing_ mattered when his blood slid slow as honey over his tongue, and when his claws encircled his waist with a possessive firmness. All others who had challenged him that night, and on the many nights past - they all seemed so distant and fleeting. But the man before him and the potence he felt beneath his fingertips, he could not see as anything but eternal next to such follies. 

The Nagloper's groan was near-mute, but present, deeply enflaming Sebastian with the need to carelessly tear and swallow; but unfortunately, he knew better than to gorge himself. The shallow wound of his neck faded quickly - far faster than his own body could right itself - as he stood with firm feet and sharp eyes, unshaken by the loss of his vitae. His mind pleasantly fogged from his feeding, Sebastian reached upwards to the Nagloper's roughly hewn face, brushing the hollow beneath the sharp crag of his cheekbone.

He allowed himself to be pulled by those claws, in the stretch of perfect satiation that followed - it was a placid languor through which he only dimly registered rough lips pressed against his own, livening to a feverish and blood-swollen need. The exploratory snaking of a long, cold tongue between his lips held a human closeness that had his body tense with decidedly less human desires - to spill his own blood in return. As much as it rather defeated the point, his need for those rows of lethal teeth lancing though his flesh, tearing into his gullet to take him inside, easily overcame any thoughts of hesitation.

"Apologies," said Sebastian, unapologetically, as he pulled away, "if I might have taken overmuch." His hand darted to his neck quickly, working quickly at buttons to expose his throat, drawing it back into an arch that he knew would entice. He hadn't, of course - the torrent of blood that animated the Nagloper's body was potent and plentiful compared to his own, but the long, needful pull of his neck made his true intent clear enough. The prick of a claw-tipped thumb brushed his chin, guiding it further upwards as, to his elation, his offer was accepted.

A chill shuddered his body as the Nagloper's tongue traced where Sebastian's pulse would have quickened in life, his maw dragging across sensitive skin. The jaws that wrapped his throat held bone-crushing strength - a grasp that likely thousands had felt before a brutal snap and then, oblivion. But for Sebastian, the Nagloper's bite was restrained, piercing him with an intoxicating, paralytic slowness.

His limbs grew weak, first, leaving his arms to wrap the Nagloper's shoulders as he faltered and sagged into his grasp. All became dull and vague, save for the points where his fangs hooked beneath his skin. The lash of pain gave a sharp edge to the deep rush of pleasure, setting him gasping, his body growing more languid with each passing second. Focus would not return to his vision or mind, even after the Laibon had quickly withdrawn with a soothing lap to his healing skin - always so wary, always taking so little. Sighing wistfully, he supposed that, yes, halting their feeding there was the prudent option... but still, he _craved_ , and as he felt the claw wandering heavily over his back, he knew that he was not the only one.

Understanding then what it was he wanted, Sebastian grabbed demandingly at the Nagloper's wrist, and pulled him into his fervour.

The pliancy of his immense body was always a beautiful thing, led easily towards one of his study's chairs; a rather oversized, high-backed piece that, still, the Laibon seemed uncomfortably large for. However, there was still room enough for Sebastian to perch, bracketing his solid thighs and firmly placing his lips back upon him for a practised tandem, returned with a lazy and somewhat bemused ease - the Nagloper rarely matched Sebastian in his desperation, perhaps due to the deeper rift between himself and his humanity, or perhaps the fact that he had died later in his life. Sebastian grabbed at the nape of his neck, to where there was a gathering of coarse fur sweeping down his back that mirrored the mane of his great warform, as the Ventrue had been fortunate enough to witness on occasion - he tugged at it to demand his closeness, urgently shoving their bodies flush together. Whatever the cause of his relative detachment, the other vampire still clearly wanted for him, even if it were a calmer want; such was made obvious as he shifted, a bloody-breathed growl accompanying the press of the Nagloper's stiffening shaft against the rough leather. Sebastian smirked. Hardly unexpected of their feeding - he himself had barely noted the pull of his own filling cock, but now, the constant ache throbbed to be ignored no longer.

The Nagloper's chest rose with a deep draw of his breath when Sebastian trailed his hand down between their legs, to where there was a touch of almost-warmth. "May I?" he asked, words unburdened by any pull of his vitae, for once - as this was one of the few occasions that the satisfaction of attention earned outmatched the thrill of control perfectly exerted. And so, he waited with eager restraint, only settling comfortably into the Nagloper's hold after he had received his steady nod.

Sebastian pondered what, exactly, it was that he wished for - and what he might justify snatching the time to spend upon. He rubbed his palm leisurely over the other man's straining cock, listening intently for each soft, hissing growl, the twitches of his sharp hips towards his hand. The Ventrue's bloody mouth felt rather suddenly dry, and it became evident which vice required indulging.

Weakness and submission were lights under which the Ventrue grave needed to avoid being cast, he knew - but that did not stop the certain... delectations for which he desired. Slipping to his knees between the thick, muscular thighs of the Laibon, parting them with hurried hands, was one of them. The other vampire's lip would not twitch in disdain for his kneeling form, nor would he ponder how he might strike him down the moment he turned his back - and that was precisely why Sebastian knew he could afford this. With only one more glance upwards, he worked instead at the tarnished metal of his belt buckle, impatient need prickling through his fingers as he pulled his cock forth.

As always, it stole his attention wholly - his most obscene adoration was reserved for this, for the Nagloper's inhumanly thick shaft, his wide cockhead pushing his skin taut as it already jutted so full and hardened for his perusal. Sebastian's touches were only cursory, to begin, wrapping his palm to his girth to savour it, to see the flutters of his great ribcage as he grew thicker in his hand. The air was thick with the deep earthen musk of his scent, and beneath it, the scent of the men he had killed earlier in the evening, still clinging to his body. It intoxicated the Ventrue, it pulled him - inciting him to lean inwards, parting his lips and running the flat of his tongue, slowly, to taste at his head.

There was some odd peace to the act - without the drive to hastily steal his own release, he wrapped his lips around the Nagloper's cock for a moment of vacuous quiet, save for the predictable rhythm of gentle growls reverberating from the depths of his vast chest. Claws pricked at his scalp, but did not push or pull; they only rested in Sebastian's hair as he stretched his lips around the flesh he took, or perhaps that he was given, casting aside the ache of his jaw for the time being. Sebastian was furiously hard by the time he had finished his steady sink down his cock, his throat full and his false breath stilled entirely as he rested in the dense tangle of ashen-charcoal hair between his legs. Driven by the Nagloper's low, throaty huffs, he dragged his tongue to catch at places where he knew would have the sinew of his leg winding tightly beneath his palms. When the other man's lips pulled back hungrily, he saw a sliver of vicious fang, stained lovingly red with Sebastian's own blood.

An exhilaration rushed him as he tightened his throat and watched how the Nagloper's stalwart features faltered with his need - but it was not _enough_ , his veins burning and cock straining with dissatisfaction. He... would admit how he struggled to maintain any semblance of generosity or patience, even in one of the few places he still genuinely felt it. The Laibon's shaft shone as he pulled his throat from it, his saliva rolling down its dead flesh swollen with unnatural life, twitching as he toyed along its length and beginning to seep over his fingers.

The Nagloper's claw pulled at his hand, beckoning him for what they both wished - for Sebastian to sit astride him once more. The firm urgency behind his wandering caresses was unmistakable, as he ran his hands up the Ventrue's legs, to tease at his clothed cock where it strained for him until he gasped, hips canting forwards with a shameless need for it. Sebastian's thoughts were fleeting as he sat in his embrace, thoughts of rutting his generous length against his own, or perhaps to take the Nagloper - though he was a creature of coarseness, of pointed fang and ragged claw, his flesh was as delectably smooth as any other man's, when he lay wrapped around his cock. However, as Sebastian felt the brush of his shaft against the back of his leg and a claw groped at him with enough ardour to near gash through his clothing, those thoughts were cast aside, to be attended another night. Instead, as the Nagloper tilted his head in silent question, he nodded quickly, rushing to slide the fine fabrics of his trousers down his thighs and his shirt from his shoulders. 

He looked to the Nagloper, keen to bask beneath his enraptured stare as he revealed himself - but he found him looking elsewhere, to where he slowly extended a hand of rough, clawed fingers. What followed next was the sound of slithering flesh and the wet crack of bone as his fingers shifted, claws snapping to retract into something more blunt and soft - a small distance closer to the hand of a man who was now long dead. Sebastian had come to know the sight of his fleshwork well, but he had never seen him adjust his form so quickly, nor with such fluid ease. Truly, his capabilities flourished with each passing night, and it _fascinated_ the Ventrue, to watch his skin glide to cover brief flashes of his decay-blackened ligaments - until a glance was shot his way, jolting him from his thoughts. He brought a hand to the Nagloper's chest, to fumble at the clasps of his undershirt and spread his palm over the hard swell of one thickly furred pectoral, where he could _feel_ it; the cold might that thrummed beneath his skin, forming him into a glorious and unkillable force for which Sebastian's cock ached.

No more time was to be wasted, then, as his arousal grew to a dire point - he made a reach back to his desk, for the drawer in which he kept that one unmarked bottle of oil, despite the protests of his more proper side. The Nagloper allowed Sebastian to smear his blunted fingers with it as he rested his hand upon the small of his back, pulling him closer until his cock brushed with a wonderful friction against the deep split of his abdominals. He drew his hands closely to the Nagloper's chest, grasping tightly at the fur running it as his cock gave an anticipatory twitch with the first press of an oiled finger to his rim.

Even after these years, the initial stretch forced a ragged gasp from his throat - at twice the thickness of his own fingers, they ignited a sordid burn that shot to throb in his cock as, slowly, he breached him. The slick slide had him writhing within his lap, skating his fingers over his shoulders wantonly, feeling for the subtle flexes of his sinew and scraping the blunt ends of his nails across coarse skin. The Nagloper's cock still throbbed between his legs, rubbing against him as he pressed his fingers inside insistently, until Sebastian's voice caught within his throat as he groaned his grateful appreciation. His body grew lax and his thoughts swam, anchored by the steadfast form to which he clung and the fingers thrusting into him - one particular hook had him jolting with a sudden cry passing his lips, his cock seeping against the Nagloper's taut stomach with his desperation.

After the third finger had sheathed within him, when the Ventrue's legs had spread to accommodate the deep, burning stretch, he withdrew to leave him empty and twitching tragically around nothingness. Not for long, never for long - the Laibon would not leave him unattended, especially in matters such as these - and soon his broad, hurriedly slicked cockhead brushed over his sack, until it was pressed with question at his loosened hole.

Sebastian watched, fixated, at his chest beginning to heave in hunger as the facsimile of life overtook them both yet further, a tightness to the other man's jaw and a rapturous flame sparking behind his eyes - the kind of flame that often overtook him before he would rend flesh from bone and fan a foe's innards across the floor. Though chilling to behold, Sebastian met his fearsome glare unflinchingly, lips parting as he lowered to split himself upon him.

It burned as it always did - but Sebastian would not allow it to stop, the maddening throb of his shaft ousting any trepidant tremors of his body in favour of the dizzying and irreplaceable need to be so _full_. He knew that his greed was vile and indecent, but in this shaded place where any sentiment but adoration had been made impossible, what reason did he have to not thoroughly gratify himself? His eyelids slipped shut as he felt his richly corded arms around him, hands spanning his navel to his spine and guiding him to sink down, each steady inch pulling him further open. Fixed into place, curled to the larger man's chest with that solemn red glare looming from far above, he knew he should have loathed the vulnerability of it all - but, drunk with the Nagloper's vitae, he could not.

With lips parting for gasps as subdued and dignified as the Ventrue was capable of, finally, he heard the Nagloper groan softly as he sheathed. As Sebastian's hands grabbed over the vast, shifting planes of his torso, fingers digging into his skin in an effort to ground himself, he could feel how his body buzzed with the urge to fuck him - to pull him along his cock as Sebastian could only relent to allow an easy and sudden defilement. Yet, even as he tightened and squeezed at his shaft, he remained resolutely still, exerting such breathtaking control so as to not ruin him completely.

Sebastian's control, however, was much less resolute - he set his thighs moving immediately, rocking atop the Nagloper for shallow movements, settling into a jerking pace made steady by his firm grip upon his shoulders. When heavy claws dug into his pelvis, Sebastian tipped his head back to languish in it, and as he relaxed into the speeding rolls of his hips, his soft and distant groans were soon met with the pointed tip of a monstrous tongue slipping into his mouth, and weathered lips upon his own. Finally, the Nagloper thrust in return, the deep and sudden stab of his cock forcing Sebastian to claw sharply at his flesh and release a shameful whine, thankfully muffled into his maw. He felt his own cock drool thickly, the Nagloper's head striking at him with exquisite precision as its thickness slid tightly past his rim. Though his tongue was clumsy, he moaned half-coherently at the sensation - groans of his assent, his praise, and a slip of the name that the Nagloper would allow no other to know him by - in the hope it all might coax and excite him yet further.

And coax it did, with a beautiful immediacy - the white specks of the Nagloper's pupils seemed to _spark_ as his hands dug with a sudden harshness at Sebastian's hips, one reaching up to span near half his ribcage as it tightened to a brutal grip. The Ventrue hardly had the time to widen his eyes before he was hefted as the other man stood, clutching him effortlessly, utterly unencumbered by his bodyweight; he cried out as his cock still deeply, persistently stabbed inside of him. His shoulder came to rest upon the chair's arm, and the rest of his form supported by a firm hand beneath his waist and tight around his hip. The Nagloper towered above him, with his power made devastatingly clear and eyes near lost to his ravenous frenzy; Sebastian locked his legs around the sturdy column of his torso with instinctive haste, eyes lidding and lips curling with his frantic need for _this_. And that need was swiftly met, as the Laibon's relentless pace began. 

Sebastian hardly heard the inarticulate noises tearing from his throat as he was fucked, dragged on his cock however the Laibon wished it, impaling him repeatedly until the room filled with the vulgar sounds of their meeting flesh. A desperate tension was overtaking his body rapidly, mounting at the stinging stretch to his hole and the tight throb of his cock slapping at his own stomach, its copious slickness wetting the hair there to stick it to his skin. The curve of the Nagloper's shaft struck at him perfectly with every stroke, honed over their decades together just as every inch of his body had been - twisted from the strange and quiet man he had once met into this behemoth of dread power before him. Exuberant, Sebastian could only wail before his might, taking all that he would give him with a gratitude that none but him would ever earn.

The tension in Sebastian's body snapped to a sudden relief, forcing a long, gasping moan from him at the next deep sheath - with a loose jaw and hips thrusting sharply at nothingness, he was finished, his cock throbbed untouched to spatter seed in careless trails over his stomach and rush him to a mindless and twitching daze. Blinking through it, he could only just catch the triumphant tug at the corner of the Nagloper's mouth - he had gotten rather adept at doing _that_ , Sebastian would confess. His body fell limp into bolstering hands as his voice became ragged, the Ventrue wincing as he grew sensitive around his unforgiving shaft. With a mercy that many might have thought the man incapable of, he pulled from Sebastian - mind lost in stupor, the Ventrue reached downwards to fumble at his cock, gleaming wet in the low light and slipping smoothly against the pull of his fingers. The supine moments were blurred with fatigue and satiation, but still, he grasped and pulled at him insistently. With only a few long, slipping strokes of his dripping length, the Nagloper's hands tightened to a grip that might have even bruised him as his eyes closed, his low growl resounding and rasping to a harsh snarl - Sebastian neither moved nor breathed as he watched the Nagloper fuck his last few stuttering thrusts into his grasp, his thick release spattering to mingle with his own over his stomach with the sharp smell of seed. A shudder ran his body as Sebastian released him, looking down to him with a fondness that was distant, but no less present.

The Nagloper relaxed his hold, hauling him once more as he slumped back to the chair with a contented rumble of a sigh, idly bringing Sebastian to sit astride him in comfortable repose, despite the foulness coating his body. In a few moments, it would be time to forget this, to ruin yet another handkerchief and leave this memory as only a lingering slick rawness as the night's obligations again took their precedence. But for a time, he allowed himself to nest comfortably beneath one of the Laibon's thick arms, watching with a soft frown as he pricked his claws back into place as easily as he might pick the gristle from beneath his fingernails.

The warmth sapped from the air as their blood settled and their bodies retreated to true undeath once more, leaving Sebastian in a still grasp that he could not quite will himself to leave. He slowly attended to himself in ways that he did not need to leave the Nagloper's arms, first, before slipping his shirt to his shoulders - as he did so, a claw brushed across his forehead. He could have obliterated his skull to bloody fragments with a single slam to the floor, Sebastian noted faintly, but the Nagloper only pushed aside the few hairs that had fallen from their place. 

"My thanks," breathed the Ventrue.

He felt a different sort of warmth at his careful touch, as he tasted the thin trace of blood that still sat upon his tongue. The taste remained as sharp and sweet as it had been many years ago, when this pact of theirs had first formed - in the calculated recognition of complementary strengths, the guarantee of trust in times growing ever more uncertain, and the footing of territory neither of them could traverse alone. That was the _true_ purpose of all of this, after all, and anything else was an illusory by-product of vitae long-festered, as much as Sebastian might wish to believe otherwise, and as much as he lost himself to the comfortable and insipid fantasy that this could be real.

He shook the thought aside. Such things were unknowable, and hardly worth ruminating upon. With a tightly restrained smile towards the Nagloper, he reluctantly pulled himself away, to arrange himself into something passing for decent even as his legs felt somewhat... precarious. The silence was still and calm between them, broken only by distant waves, as the Nagloper stood to do the same. Once more in those quiet seconds, he felt his presence in how it radiated to seize the very air, a crushing force that would have overshadowed even the few elders with whom he touched shoulders. It was one of the parts of him that had enamoured Sebastian so, when they had first made their acquaintance - the endless possibilities that lay in such incomprehensible potential, and the wonder of having it look his way. Yet what had _happened_ since then, that he was trapped within this dim study, with what had once been his sweeping barrage of power laying dead in the undertow?

As he glanced back to his desk after slipping his final button through, he felt some painful twinge within his skull. He had taken enough of both of their time as it was, and yet, the words were leaving his mouth without full thought. "I have been thinking," said Sebastian, "of America."

The Nagloper lifted his chin in interested question. Catching the moonlight streaming from the window, the fierce notches of his countenance were etched sharply.

"You may recall an acquaintance of mine - a Toreador, brown hair, you particularly disliked him?" The Nagloper narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, but gave no affirmation - to be expected, as he made no secret of his disdain for his many passing associates, nor for how quickly he dismissed them from his mind. "The specifics matter little, anyhow. What interests me is the hollow he's dug for himself, with supposed ease, from some Camarilla niche. The Sect's infrastructure may well prove itself less... impregnable than I remember it, in those parts."

He received no reply, for a moment, as the Nagloper stood, stilled with thought. Sebastian realised that he was asking much of him, to abandon all that they had gathered in favour of more hostile grounds, and that the politics of power had never interested him - only its applications. However, Sebastian also knew that he might be able to provide such things in abundance elsewhere - far more than he had yet been able to provide as the charismatic face of their union - should his window of opportunity be just that fraction wider.

The Nagloper's low voice was dull with doubt. "And your Camarilla would tolerate my presence?" 

"They would, should they have no choice in the matter," he replied firmly. But still, the Nagloper's brow was heavy, as he glanced to the window with lips pressed to a tight line. Sebastian took a tentative step closer. "I speak only of fleeting thoughts and distant futures, and I... understand, if you think it drastic."

The Laibon's sigh was a heavy and deep sound, still sternly staring to the world outside. "It is obvious how this land grows rotten," he said, his voice rasping to quietness. "If you believe there is more to seize elsewhere, we leave."

His eyes were upon him once more, suddenly, intensely focused as Sebastian strode to close the space between them, a grin splitting his lips: "Truly?"

The Nagloper's answering nod was slow, with a sincere finality.

He could not say whether it was gratitude, relief or simple glee that pushed him to lunge, to taste at the Nagloper again. His kiss was eagerly reciprocated with demanding and avid fangs at his throat, against his lips, all become both frantic and faded beneath a newly burgeoning excitement. Sebastian cleared the letters from his desk with a careless hand as he was pressed upon it, giving himself entirely to seize what he wished - for a few minutes more, at the least.

The maggots of the domain could wait; they could waste their eternities in waiting, as far as Sebastian cared. He had grown tired of the insignificant creatures, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to nosferlife for the beta, and thank u reader for reading ^_^


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